Well, as mainstream as high-end Macs can be, anyway. When the first Retina MacBook Pro was released back in 2012, it came with great hardware and a beautiful screen, but only Apple’s applications had been upgraded to really take advantage of it. It was also very expensive—it started at $2,199—and the non-Retina versions were refreshed with the same CPUs and GPUs and sold for a much lower price. It was an attractive notebook, but it was an early adopter’s trinket that came with as many caveats as virtues.

Fast forward 16 months. Third-party developers have had time to update their applications. The cost has come down to a still-high-but-not-for-a-MacBook-Pro starting price of $1,999. And, of course, the 15-inch non-Retina Pro has been dropped from the lineup, survived by its awkward, un-refreshed, smaller counterpart. If you’re looking for a 15-inch MacBook Pro, the Retina version is now a more appealing option, but it’s also your only option. Let’s take a look at how it stacks up.

Body, build quality, and Thunderbolt 2

Specs at a glance: 15-inch 2013 Apple Retina MacBook Pro

Screen

2880×1800 at 15.4" (220 PPI)

OS

OS X 10.9.0 "Mavericks"

CPU

2.0GHz Intel Core i7-4750HQ (Turbo up to 3.2GHz)

RAM

8GB or 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L (non-upgradeable)

GPU

Intel Iris Pro 5200 (integrated)

HDD

256GB solid-state drive

Networking

802.11a/b/g/n/ac (up to 1.3Gbps), Bluetooth 4.0

Ports

2x USB 3.0, 2x Thunderbolt 2, card reader, HDMI, headphones

Size

14.13" × 9.73" × 0.71" (358.9 mm × 247.1 mm × 18.0 mm)

Weight

4.46 lbs (2.02 kg)

Battery

8625 mAh

Warranty

1 year

Starting price

$1,999.99

Price as reviewed

$1,999.99

Other perks

Webcam, backlit keyboard, dual integrated mics

The short version: The design, size, and weight of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro are virtually unchanged from last year. It takes some cues from the MacBook Air, but Apple’s largest laptop has more in common with the MacBook Pros of yore than with the Airs. Thunderbolt 2 is the only interface upgrade.

The long version: While the 13-inch model has been made a little thinner and a little lighter than it was in 2012, the chassis of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro is identical to its predecessor. Our notes about the 2012 model’s design are still applicable now, but since it’s far more likely that you’ll be coming to the Retina MacBook Pro from an older, non-Retina version, we’ll go over it again in brief.

All of Apple’s laptops share the same broad strokes: backlit Apple logo on the lid, aluminum unibody construction, a nice stiff hinge, backlit chiclet keyboards with reasonable key travel, and big, accurate, responsive multi-touch trackpads. Apple has been selling MacBook Pros that fit this description for the better part of five years.

The Retina MacBook Pro fits in the same mold, but it’s infused with just a hint of MacBook Air. It loses the optical drive and the user-serviceable parts that older Pros used to have, but it gets just a little thinner and lighter and moves to all solid-state storage. It has a pound-and-a-half of weight on the largest MacBook Air, and you’ll feel that difference in your bag, but it’s not some monstrous barely mobile workstation either.

Like the Airs, the Retina MacBook Pro has given up its wired Ethernet port, but it comes with a few others to help earn it that “Pro” label. In addition to two USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, and a combination headphone/headset jack, it includes a full-size HDMI port and two Thunderbolt ports that power users can count on to get their wired Ethernet and FireWire ports back if they really need them.

Enlarge/ Apple's keyboard and trackpad remain unchanged, and that's just fine by us. The speaker grilles on either side produce a nice, full sound with a reasonable amount of bass for a laptop.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The MacBook Air (top) and the Pro are about the same thickness at their thickest point, but the Air tapers off, while the Pro is 0.71 inches thick throughout.

Andrew Cunningham

Those two ports have been upgraded to Thunderbolt 2 courtesy of Intel’s DSL5520 controller, and this is the first shipping Mac that uses the new version of the high-speed interface. The controller includes four Thunderbolt channels, which can provide data bandwidth of up to 20Gbps to each port (or 10Gbps per channel).

The original Thunderbolt used four 10Gbps channels too, but they were separated differently—the controllers provided two sets of 10Gbps channels, and the new ones provide one set of 20Gbps channels. Thunderbolt 2 additionally adds support for the DisplayPort 1.2 spec, which is necessary to support 4K output, though according to Apple's spec sheet, each Thunderbolt port can only support a single 2560×1600 display at once (for a total of three displays, including the laptop's). The Retina MacBook Pro provides 4K video output through HDMI—that port supports 3840×2160 displays at 30Hz and 4096×2160 displays at 24Hz.

Enlarge/ The Retina MacBook Pro (bottom) picks up a second Thunderbolt port that the MacBook Air doesn't have.

Because the total amount of bandwidth hasn’t changed, all existing Thunderbolt cables should all be able to run at full Thunderbolt 2 speeds when connected to supported computers and accessories. Actually testing Thunderbolt 2 is a bit out of our hands at the moment since no accessories exist that actually use the standard—the original Thunderbolt hasn’t proven to be very popular aside from in Mac accessories and the odd dock or external hard drive—but 4K display support at least is a tangible feature benefit that video and photo professionals will appreciate as the standard becomes more widespread.

The screen: Better with time (and apps)

The short version: It’s the same 2880×1800 screen, but third-party applications actually take advantage of it now.

The long version: The Retina MacBook Pro’s 15.4-inch 2880×1800 screen is no longer unique. The Chromebook Pixel and an increasing flow of Windows PCs are all beginning to ship with screens in the same density range, and most of them share the Pro’s great viewing angles, good contrast, excellent brightness, and vibrant color. The panel itself is only part of the story, though.

Enlarge/ A chunk of the Ars homepage on the 2013 13-inch MacBook Air's screen. Note the clearly visible pixels.

Andrew Cunningham

Enlarge/ The same stretch of homepage on the Retina display. Our header image and all of this text is Retina-optimized, and it looks nice and smooth.

Andrew Cunningham

When Apple’s other product lines went Retina, there was a transition period for third-party applications as their developers updated them with scaled-up assets. Non-Retina Macs have been around for much longer than non-Retina iPhones or iPads, though, and of Apple’s entire Mac lineup, only the 13- and 15-inch Pros include the screen at all. You can reasonably expect to use an iPhone or iPad these days without ever running into a non-Retina app, but it still happens with some frequency in OS X.

That said, the people who held off on a Retina MacBook Pro last summer to buy one now will be rewarded for waiting: in the last year and a half, most major applications have gained support for the feature. Most of the programs I use in a normal day—Apple’s built-in apps (no surprise), Microsoft Office (mostly, with the exception of a few icons and dialog boxes), Chrome and Firefox, Tweetbot, Scrivener, and the Limechat IRC client—have all been more-or-less optimized for the high-density screens. Audacity is the only one that remains totally non-Retina, and this is a more common occurrence the further you move away from the beaten path (doubly so for applications that aren’t in active development).

The biggest problem at this point is actually the Web itself. Having Chrome, Firefox, and Safari Retina-optimized means that text looks smooth and sharp regardless of the browser you’re using, but most sites still use lower-resolution images that look soft and vaguely blurry on a Retina screen. This situation should continue to improve now that high-density displays are proliferating in Windows laptops, and Web standards are catching up, but for now browsing is still the least consistent thing about using a Retina Mac.

Yeah, I really liked the "short version" "long version" format for a detailed review. In some sections, I read the short version, in others, the long version. I'd love to see this become a standard Ars format.

At that level of graphics performance it would almost be impossible to do any gpu-intensive tasks on a external and internal display setup. I was actually a bit thrilled when they dropped the price to $2k, which would be about $1800 for me via the local education program, then found out that they went for iris pro graphics...

I wanted to buy a 15" rMBP next year (maxed out in CPU&RAM) but I do want a dedicated GPU. This new trend of using integrated chips even in the 15" lineup has me worried though. I know this is speculation but do you think that Apple will keep the dedicated chip with the Broadwell refresh next year?

I wanted to buy a 15" rMBP next year (maxed out in CPU&RAM) but I do want a dedicated GPU. This new trend of using integrated chips even in the 15" lineup has me worried though. I know this is speculation but do you think that Apple will keep the dedicated chip with the Broadwell refresh next year?

I think it's likely, but Broadwell will also be a faster GPU, so it's hard to say how it'll shake out. I think the 2011 MBAs are still a good example - HD 3000 was a step back, but HD 4000 in the 2012s wasn't a half-bad IGP for the size.

At that level of graphics performance it would almost be impossible to do any gpu-intensive tasks on a external and internal display setup. I was actually a bit thrilled when they dropped the price to $2k, which would be about $1800 for me via the local education program, then found out that they went for iris pro graphics...

that is plain wrong, I know there was integrated intel graphics on retina macbook pros before. Perhaps it was just the 13" model, but I dont think you could upgrade the graphics on that even if you wanted to. you were stuck with intel graphics on a macbook "pro" for a 2,560 × 1,600 screen.

edit: Just checked, and for the 13" model, you are STILL stuck with intel integrated graphics. Calling it "iris pro" doesnt change a thing.

This is a review of the 15" model, and all of last year's 15" models had 650Ms in them. We'll be giving the 13" its own review in the next week or so.

I wish you could upgrade to the 750M without having to get the whole 600 dollars more package. That's unfortunate.

Fair enough, but if Apple offered such an option they would probably charge $300 for it. Here you are getting 256 MB extra storage space (which makes the storage faster too), 15% more CPU, 8 GB more RAM, and the graphics card for $600 so it isn't a bad bundle at all by Apple standards.

I wish you could upgrade to the 750M without having to get the whole 600 dollars more package. That's unfortunate.

Fair enough, but if Apple offered such an option they would probably charge $300 for it. Here you are getting 256 MB extra storage space (which makes the storage faster too), 15% more CPU, 8 GB more RAM, and the graphics card for $600 so it isn't a bad bundle at all by Apple standards.

Apple Bundles are never bad. They are really good at getting as much money out of you as possible. And you are getting an awesome machine. On the other hand you suddenly pay 2.6 grand for the smallest laptop with discreet gpu in the lineup which when seen from the outside is just insane.

I just think dropping the superdrive and ethernet port is a terrible idea.

At least those can be substituted with external options. I think professionals will miss the anti-glare screen option more - I know Apple graphics designers who prefer matte for the better color reproduction and lack of what they call "iStrain" that results from reflective displays.

The 2012 refurbs seem to be a bargain now. On the Canadian Apple Store, the 15" starts at $1600. Not bad if you don't want/need 802.11ac or Thunderbolt 2 but want the more powerful dedicated graphics card...

The previous gen Retina MBPs I played with seemed to have some UI frame rate lag on things like the green button resize, calender flip, and other basic things. Is that completely eliminated in the new models? Or is it even gone in the old model with Mavericks?

I just think dropping the superdrive and ethernet port is a terrible idea.

At least those can be substituted with external options. I think professionals will miss the anti-glare screen option more - I know Apple graphics designers who prefer matte for the better color reproduction and lack of what they call "iStrain" that results from reflective displays.

I didn't even notice that option was gone. The reflective displays are a bit sharper, but the matte displays are more usable. I wonder if it was a technical issue that doesn't work with the retina display (thickness or usability) or if they just want to get rid of SKUs in order to maximize profits across the board.

Dropping the HDD at the same time, even as an option, strikes me as even worse. No more MacBooks for me, unfortunately. I see how these changes are good for Apple, but they're not good for me.

This is unfortunate for those who still need legacy tech such as spinny disks, however it is important for Apple's long-term survival that they skate to where the puck is going, not where it is and I am happy to see Apple doing that. The focus is right where it should be- portability, long battery life, great screens, and the latest Wifi. Perhaps in a few years there will be SSDs that meet your needs?

Not spending premium to deal with crappy integrated graphics. Would go the discrete Nvidia route but it seems it still won't keep up with native resolution for gaming and it still runs too hot. Have to wait for discrete graphics with smaller die shrink (16nm) to solve both issues. For now, laptop with 1080p is more optimal.

Your comments on graphics performance aren't supported by my experiences. I have the high end model from last year and the GT 650M keeps up just fine with native resolution gaming in both OS X and Windows 7. Does it run hot when gaming? Yes, but nothing that a pair of jeans can't handle (and generally you're not gaming with it in your lap since you'll want to be using a mouse, too).

To be fair, it couldn't keep up with native resolution gaming when I first bought it and that did give me some pause for buyer's remorse. However, Apple patched that with, if I recall correctly, SMC Update 1.1 last March. I've had no issues since that patch with the sole exception of scrolling performance in Safari 6 under Mountain Lion (a issue that didn't exist in Firefox). And that issue has been fixed in Safari 7 under Mavericks.

By gaming, I mean games like World of Warcraft (OS X), EverQuest 2 (Windows 7), the Call of Duty games (OS X), and so on; games that can beat up your graphics card on the best of days when running at high detail levels (particularly in a laptop).

Based on my experiences with the GT 650M, I'm pretty confident that the GT 750M is going to perform just fine. And if it doesn't, it's not going to be the card, but the drivers/firmware and Apple's going to update that at some point (Apple generally does release a couple of firmware updates over the life of a laptop).

The original Thunderbolt used two 10Gbps channels too, but data could only move in one direction on either lane; if you were downloading data at the rate of 10Gbps but not uploading anything, the second channel would sit completely unused. Thunderbolt 2 adds “channel aggregation,” which allows both channels to be used simultaneously to transmit data in the same direction.

This isn't accurate at all. Thunderbolt channels have consistently been 10 Gbit/s, full-duplex (i.e. in both directions simultaneously). Without channel bonding, a single protocol adapter could only make use of one channel at a time, however that channel was always operating in full-duplex mode for PCIe data, and multiple adapters could be employed at the same time to make use of both channels in a link. Thunderbolt 2 allows the two channels in a link to be bonded so that the PCIe protocol adapters can achieve throughput > 10 Gbit/s per port, and the DisplayPort protocol adapters can handle a full DP 1.2 main link at 17.28 Gbit/s.

It's like any other link aggregation scheme. If you bond multiple ethernet channels together, they don't go from being half-duplex to full-duplex, you just double the overall bandwidth by going wider.

Edit: The channel-bonded mode of Thunderbolt 2 should also benefit from most of the multiplexing happening at the packet level which is considerably more efficient than conventional switching.

Edit 2: A second reading of what was stated in the article makes me think you've fallen victim to Intel's not-so-straightforward parlance when it comes to lanes, channels, ports and links. A lane is indeed a single signaling pair, and operates in a single direction only. However, a channel is comprised of two lanes: one Tx and one Rx. A standard Thunderbolt port or cable provides connections for four lanes in the form of two channels: two Tx/Rx pairs. So Thunderbolt 2 simply allows the bonding of the two channels from a single port / cable, effectively creating a single 20 Gbit/s, full-duplex link.

Just to observe I think the graphs on page 2 "Unigine Heaven" and "Unigine Valley" are slightly wrong. Both involve bar chart for the 2012 13" rMBP/Intel HD 4000. The maximum and minimums seem to be the wrong way round. I assume this was a transcription error into your charting application of choice, either that or the benchmarks have thrown a wobbly on the Intel HD 4000.

Is it just me, or are there few issues with the graphs? For staters, they say that the 15" rMBP have i5, when they have i7. Also the first and third Geekbench-graphs don't match. Results are the same for the 2013-model, but for 2012-model the results are different. Am I missing something? In the third graph, the 2012-model suddenly beats the 2013-model.

Not spending premium to deal with crappy integrated graphics. Would go the discrete Nvidia route but it seems it still won't keep up with native resolution for gaming and it still runs too hot. Have to wait for discrete graphics with smaller die shrink (16nm) to solve both issues. For now, laptop with 1080p is more optimal.

Your comments on graphics performance aren't supported by my experiences. I have the high end model from last year and the GT 650M keeps up just fine with native resolution gaming in both OS X and Windows 7. Does it run hot when gaming? Yes, but nothing that a pair of jeans can't handle (and generally you're not gaming with it in your lap since you'll want to be using a mouse, too).

To be fair, it couldn't keep up with native resolution gaming when I first bought it and that did give me some pause for buyer's remorse. However, Apple patched that with, if I recall correctly, SMC Update 1.1 last March. I've had no issues since that patch with the sole exception of scrolling performance in Safari 6 under Mountain Lion (a issue that didn't exist in Firefox). And that issue has been fixed in Safari 7 under Mavericks.

By gaming, I mean games like World of Warcraft (OS X), EverQuest 2 (Windows 7), the Call of Duty games (OS X), and so on; games that can beat up your graphics card on the best of days when running at high detail levels (particularly in a laptop).

Based on my experiences with the GT 650M, I'm pretty confident that the GT 750M is going to perform just fine. And if it doesn't, it's not going to be the card, but the drivers/firmware and Apple's going to update that at some point (Apple generally does release a couple of firmware updates over the life of a laptop).

I've ordered the 750M model, with the 1TB drive. No sense in cutting corners on storage with something that's not upgradeable a year or two down the line. The Iris is definitely no slouch, but I wouldn't rely on it for the newest games. It's leagues beyond the integrated graphics of yore, yet still I've this lingering distrust. I'm already making a serious enough compromise gaming on a MacBook Pro, but for the past few years I've found it's okay so long as I'm not looking to play bleeding edge games on ultra settings. I expect L4D2 and WoW to be running pretty damn well on my baby when it arrives. Going from a 2010 MacBook Pro should be quite a difference. I might finally see WoW on highest settings, and be able to play it with greater than 10 FPS in heavy scenes.

Losing on-board Ethernet isn't a big issue for me - I really only use Ethernet when troubleshooting the router or the AppleTV, and I've older stuff I can hook-up for that. Optical drive will be a little harder to live without. I've all my stuff ripped now, so I'll just buy an external drive for those rare occasions I have a new disc to rip.

Looking at iFixit's photo of the 15's logic board, there's a un-Apple-like amount of unused board space because the overall design needs to accommodate the dGPU option. Broadwell will incorporate the PCH (blue outline) onto the CPU package, which frees up even more space.

If expectations of large GPU performance bumps in Broadwell pan out, I think Apple benefits too much from dropping dGPU completely to expect anything else from them. I'm just hoping they use the extra space to give us more battery life.

Dropping the HDD at the same time, even as an option, strikes me as even worse. No more MacBooks for me, unfortunately. I see how these changes are good for Apple, but they're not good for me.

This is unfortunate for those who still need legacy tech such as spinny disks, however it is important for Apple's long-term survival that they skate to where the puck is going, not where it is and I am happy to see Apple doing that. The focus is right where it should be- portability, long battery life, great screens, and the latest Wifi. Perhaps in a few years there will be SSDs that meet your needs?

Aside from cost, is there really a need for spinning disks in a portable? Cost and capacity were the things that kept me away from SSD, but now with 1TB I'm at the minimum size I need. Cost of course remains a concern, albeit lessened by the years.

Dropping the HDD at the same time, even as an option, strikes me as even worse. No more MacBooks for me, unfortunately. I see how these changes are good for Apple, but they're not good for me.

This is unfortunate for those who still need legacy tech such as spinny disks, however it is important for Apple's long-term survival that they skate to where the puck is going, not where it is and I am happy to see Apple doing that. The focus is right where it should be- portability, long battery life, great screens, and the latest Wifi. Perhaps in a few years there will be SSDs that meet your needs?

Aside from cost, is there really a need for spinning disks in a portable? Cost and capacity were the things that kept me away from SSD, but now with 1TB I'm at the minimum size I need. Cost of course remains a concern, albeit lessened by the years.

Not spending premium to deal with crappy integrated graphics. Would go the discrete Nvidia route but it seems it still won't keep up with native resolution for gaming and it still runs too hot. Have to wait for discrete graphics with smaller die shrink (16nm) to solve both issues. For now, laptop with 1080p is more optimal.

Your comments on graphics performance aren't supported by my experiences. I have the high end model from last year and the GT 650M keeps up just fine with native resolution gaming in both OS X and Windows 7. Does it run hot when gaming? Yes, but nothing that a pair of jeans can't handle (and generally you're not gaming with it in your lap since you'll want to be using a mouse, too).

To be fair, it couldn't keep up with native resolution gaming when I first bought it and that did give me some pause for buyer's remorse. However, Apple patched that with, if I recall correctly, SMC Update 1.1 last March. I've had no issues since that patch with the sole exception of scrolling performance in Safari 6 under Mountain Lion (a issue that didn't exist in Firefox). And that issue has been fixed in Safari 7 under Mavericks.

By gaming, I mean games like World of Warcraft (OS X), EverQuest 2 (Windows 7), the Call of Duty games (OS X), and so on; games that can beat up your graphics card on the best of days when running at high detail levels (particularly in a laptop).

Based on my experiences with the GT 650M, I'm pretty confident that the GT 750M is going to perform just fine. And if it doesn't, it's not going to be the card, but the drivers/firmware and Apple's going to update that at some point (Apple generally does release a couple of firmware updates over the life of a laptop).

Losing on-board Ethernet isn't a big issue for me - I really only use Ethernet when troubleshooting the router or the AppleTV, and I've older stuff I can hook-up for that. Optical drive will be a little harder to live without. I've all my stuff ripped now, so I'll just buy an external drive for those rare occasions I have a new disc to rip.

I see the Pro as a machine for the power user and I think that Ethernet and the Optical drive are both still useful for those people. The Air on the other hand is all about being as thin as possible.

Hey all, I work almost entirely in Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator. Primarily Photoshop where I edit a lot of photos. I've got an old late 2008 Macbook Pro and I'd love to upgrade.

I don't know a whole lot about tech, but do any of the programs I use need a discrete GPU to function properly? i.e. do I need to get a discrete GPU to properly edit photos in Photoshop CS6?

No. And compared to your current computer, this MBP runs rings around it in every performance-metric.

Thanks a ton! Yep, I have a feeling that almost any new laptop I get would beat this one out. I was just trying to decide between getting this one or purchasing a refurb of last years model. Most of my research seems to indicate that Photoshop doesn't use the GPU much beyond some of its newer 3D features (which I almost never utilize). So I think I'll be getting this years model. Pretty excited.